


On the blandness of hospital food

by forgetme



Category: Naruto
Genre: 5 Times, Angst, Fluff and Angst, For Me, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Physical Disability, Post-Chapter 699, Recovery, Snippets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-12 23:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4498593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgetme/pseuds/forgetme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: Five things Kakashi does for Gai.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One - Flower

The first thing Gai sees is a strange white blob, its fuzzy outline indistinct against the bright glare that threatens to scorch his eyeballs. His eyes fall shut again, neon colors dancing across the inside of his eyelids.

It takes a long time for him to fully regain consciousness. For a while he’s in and out, drifting without an anchor, everything looking and sounding so distant. The white thing is always there, hovering by his side. One time he thinks he sees it move.  

When he’s more lucid, it starts to look like an intricate pattern, an indecipherable code. Gai finds himself staring at it as reality fades in and out around him.  

When he really comes to, or at least enough to recognize where he is – Konoha hospital – and finally remembers what happened – the war – and realizes that the strange thing is nothing more than a bouquet of big white flowers, he’s almost disappointed. But they are beautiful.

White lotuses.

The day he recognizes the lotus flowers, Gai also realizes that he cannot move, can’t even turn his head or lift a finger. His world ends at the fuzzy edge of his field of vision. What he can see of his body is white and strange, inert, stiff, deformed. The memory of fire looms in the not so far distance.

_The lotus in Konoha always blooms twice._

His father said that to him, his hand on Gai’s trembling shoulder, as Gai wiped snot and blood off his face.

_The lotus blooms twice._

  
Gai taught Lee, who reminded him so much of his dad that sometimes it was hard to look at him. (People always thought he picked Lee because he saw himself in the boy and that was part of it too, but superimposed over his own shadow was always another. They had no clue.)

The first time Tenten and Lee come to visit him in his otherwise drab little room – or, more accurately, the first time he is conscious while they’re visiting – Gai, his lips too numb to form words, glares at the bouquet, trying to communicate his question.

Tenten gets it first, but all she can give him is a shake of her head and a vague shrug. “They’ve been here all this time, sensei. We didn’t bring them.”    

Gai has suspected as much, after all his precious students walked in with a wonderful bouquet of sunflowers.

Then who? Who would leave lotus flowers by his bedside? After what happened and considering the state he is in, the gesture seems ironic, almost sarcastic. He can’t think of anyone who would go that far. Except for maybe one person, but _he_ is not the type to give flowers, at least not to the living.

Still Gai takes it as a challenge. It’s not good enough to stare at the flowers out of the corner of his eye until he gets a headache. He has to turn his head, no matter how much of an effort it is. It takes him a day - a long painful day of moving millimeter by millimeter, taking harsh, broken breaths whenever his body forces him to pause. It’s a triumph, though, to finally really see them, the sinking sun dousing them in warm red and orange light. The petals look like flames cut out of paper and Gai realizes that more than anything he wants to touch them, feel their softness against his fingertips. As he is now, his body a prison of paralysis, it seems impossible, but this is his next challenge.

A few days later, when the first white petal falls, Gai catches it in the palm of his hand.


	2. Two - Spice

After a week the bandages are taken off his face. The nurse who does it lets him look into a mirror afterwards. She holds it up for him, his reflection framed in her hands. His skin is raw, a meaty pink, far from his usual healthy tan, but other than that he looks like he always looked -  strong and handsome, his eyebrows even bushier than he remembered.

Gai lifts intrepid fingers to his brow. Every movement still hurts. He brushes his fingertips across his lips as he tries on his old smile.

“You look great! It's amazing what Shizune-san and Tsunade-sama have accomplished! You can barely even see the scars anymore! A few weeks from now you'll be as good as new!” Even to him the young nurse’s praise feels over the top, her voice high-pitched to the point of shrillness. He wonders what she’s trying to mask. Pity?

“Thank you,” he says and gives her his first thumbs up, a little shaky but true.

His voice is still a hoarse whisper. Speaking is a chore he wants to think of as training. Everything is training now, even breathing, everything he used to take for granted has slipped from his grasp and now seems just out of reach. Eating is one of the things that ever since he woke up has been considered beyond him. Hooked to IVs feeding him translucent liquids, machines helping him stay alive, Maito Gai is one ICU patient never expected to make a full recovery. Bit by bit, however, he is working on proving them wrong.

So the day he is allowed his first serving of actual food in weeks, he feels like celebrating. It’s only a bowl of miso with a straw as Gai’s trembling hands cannot yet be trusted to hold up the bowl and he hates the idea of his students feeding him like an infant or a geriatric patient.

When the first drop hits his tongue he is elated. Almost immediately though, disappointment sets in. The soup practically has no taste, perfectly bland and lukewarm, it fills his mouth like dishwater.

A couple of days later there’s rice, a white mound of it sitting in a colorful bowl. Gai smiles and picks up the chopsticks, frowning with effort and concentration. The wooden sticks keep clicking against each other, trembling in his shaking fingers like branches in the wind. His students watch him, friendly concern written on their faces, both of them ready to jump in at any moment should he drop his food on the blanket.

Beads of sweat forming on his forehead, Gai pokes at the small mountain of rice, but whatever he manages to pick up soon crumbles from his chopsticks and rains down onto his hospital gown. In the end they give him a spoon and when he puts the first spoonful in his mouth and the rice sits tasteless and mushy on his tongue, he wants to weep.

Condiments are a big no. Gai knows because he has asked, several times by now, and always received the same reply. “There’s only so much your stomach can handle, Gai-san,” they tell him. “Give it time.”

Naturally the next thing he does is try to enlist Tenten and Lee to help him. “This is an S-rank mission, my precious students! Your sensei’s life depends on you!” Breathless from his first Very Inspirational - albeit short -  Speech in what feels like forever, Gai beams at them.

“Of course, sensei! I will do whatever it takes--”

“No. Definitely not,” Tenten replies without a hint of hesitation. She folds her arms across her chest and flat out ignores Lee’s shocked expression. “I’m not helping you with something this stupid.” Without another word, she turns and walks out of the room, just like that.

“Tenten!”  There’s no reply, only the sound of the hospital, shuffling feet, the squeak of gurney wheels, something that might have been a groan of pain, too far away to tell.

* * *

Lee fails his mission spectacularly. Sakura of all people is the one who catches him in the act of smuggling in chili powder. The small square packets slip out from their hiding place under Lee’s right legwarmer as he walks past her in the hallway and there is hell to pay.

Gai only hears about it after, from Lee who, his eyes teary and downcast, is sitting by his bedside when Gai wakes up.

“I’m sorry, sensei,” Lee says and with that, Gai’s hope simply evaporates.

* * *

Three bland meals later Gai wakes up to a new day pierced by old pain.

He blinks. The room is grey with early morning light. Gai can sense cloudy weather, an overcast sky beyond the walls and window pane. What does it matter to him? He’ll be trapped inside all day and the next and the next and the next… His future stretches out in front of him, days flying past like calendar pages, identical white squares distinguishable only by their numbers.

_No, it’s wrong to think like that!_

Gai grits his teeth; he’s not the type to let despair have its way with him. He won’t—

His muscles tense and something crinkles in his right hand, sharp edges biting into his palm. Confused, Gai brings his hand up to his eyes and opens his fingers.

Three shiny foil packets of extra spicy ramen seasoning rest in the palm of his hand and underneath them he finds a tiny crumpled note that reads, _Don’t overdo it._

An errant beam of sunlight happens to fall into his room just as a grin spreads across Gai's face.

* * *

 

He’s violently sick that night, but it’s worth it.

 


End file.
